That Which Lies in Silence
by MaldaineD
Summary: When Batman hasn't checked into the Watchtower after many days, the Justice League grows worried. A bubble around Gotham has made it a deadzone, and so Hal Jordan and Barry Allen are sent in to see if they can find Bruce Wayne and solve the source of the problem.


The people just stood around, and most of them didn't even try to move, or to make any noise. They knew that their voices couldn't be heard, and they knew that there wasn't a Batman to save them. Whoever he was, he had left them stranded without voices, without the communication that they desperately needed. Tech supply stories only had TVs with static on the screens, and radios only blared white noise. There was still sound, just no talking, no words, and without, the people were starting to lose touch. In an instant, language was no longer a tool to muster. In an instant, these people had been reduced to expressionless shells. They didn't even try.

The League had known about the problem for about a day or so, and as they investigated, they found no clues, and what was worse, they found no Batman. Had he really just left his people to stare at each other's vacant faces? Some news reports had said that it appeared no looting was going on. Why would the people steal? They couldn't use most of what they would want. TVs, stereos, video games. Nothing that interested them worked. The people could have a run on the city if they wanted to because police scanners and radios didn't work either, and without a means of expression, teams couldn't be formally put together. Hand signals and written directions could only get so far, and yet, the people didn't revolt. They became complacent.

By the week's end, after the League still had no clues about what was going on, Hal Jordan and Barry Allen volunteered to try and find Bruce somewhere within Gotham. They knew that going in meant no connection to the League. Hell, none of Victor's equipment was able to penetrate through whatever was causing the dead zone to occur. All online maps had the entire 500square miles of Gotham as a black spot. Hal and Barry had known each other for a long time, and the felt confident in their abilities to properly execute the league's plan without verbal communication. They may not have known the city as well as some others, but the group agreed that sending Superman into a potential magic field wasn't a particularly wise choice. Disputes in other parts of the world were causing the team to be completely split up. The boys would have forty-eight hours. If the League didn't hear anything from them within that time, they would send in a larger team of heroes, but they hoped that it wouldn't come to that.

It didn't take long for Hal to understand why the people didn't want to do anything. With no words, the entire city just felt empty. Perhaps the most bizarre feeling he had experience in a long time was opening his mouth to say something to Barry once they were in the dead zone, and hearing nothing come out, not even a simple consonant or vowel. He could hear Barry laugh through his nose, but there was little expression in it, and it just didn't seem like Barry. Hal's charm couldn't be heard over the deafening silence of the wind through buildings and the breathy sighs of children who had lost the muster to even toss a ball.

Barry pointed to Hal, and he gave him a nod. Hal returned it, but what did it mean? Their masks covered a good bit of their expressions, so even the nod seemed to be missing something, but then Hal saw a quick smile on Barry's face, and for a moment, his will was reassured, and he nodded again.

_Whoooooooosh._

The wind?

_Click. Click click._

A car starting...

Barry put his fingers up against his head, then two fingers to his eyes followed by pulling out a paper map from his costume. He pointed to Wayne Tower on the map, and he gave directions for what seemed like 2 hours worth of time before arrive to the front of the building. He gave a thumbs up, and Hal did the same, and before he knew it, the Flash had started to stalk the streets of Gotham. Hal could hear the sound of his running through the buildings, and he could count the slips of paper and trash that landed back on the sidewalk after Barry's jet stream had moved them simply from the sound their rustling made.

Hal had never quite felt so alone. Even space didn't feel this empty. In space loneliness came with the absence of life. Here, there was life all around, but it just wasn't trying to live. With barely any people out, he tried to shake the feeling, and he floated up into the sky and started to comb the tops of buildings. He wondered if it would be better for them to search at night since Batman was known for his night prowling, but when they only had 48 hours to try and find THE Batman, he decided that any amount of time would be worth it. Even the skies were a dull grey, which only heightened the sense of entrapment. The buildings loomed with a silent desolation; the only solace came from the sound of the breeze in Hal's ears.

The two hours had come to a close, and the two of them had found nothing. Hal was clearly looking dreary, and there was really no way for Barry to help him other than to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Hal grabbed it, and gave an unsure face. Hal was a leader, a man of action! Sure, Barry was too, but Barry didn't command an army. His words usually weren't used to rally, more point out some more than obvious jokes when the time was right, or a clue if he had discovered something of use. Hal was used to speaking to incite strength, his power dwelled within emotion that he was clearly feeling unable to express. There was no helping this, though it preyed on Barry's mind. What could he do other than let him know that he was there with him?

They set up another time to search, and they said that they would meet back in front of Wayne Tower in another 2 hours.

Truthfully it wasn't the lack of chatter that started to creep into Barry's mind, but it was the way that so many people just sat in front of their TVs with static playing in front of their faces. It was strange, as though they had given up. They could simply leave the city, but they would leave so much behind if they did. Barry had promised to help as many people as he could when he was resurrected those years ago, but how do you help people that seem to be completely unwilling to even remove themselves from the routines that they established?

_Clenk._

It sounded like a piece of change hitting a storm drain.

_BANG!_

And that one sounded like a gunshot, but in the stilled silence of the city, the sound simply ricocheted from every skyscraper to the next. Barry slid to a stop.

_BANG!_

He heard again, but this time, it sounded faintly different. So close to the real thing that it was the real thing. He couldn't quite explain it, or was it that he didn't really want to try? Barry gave himself a little slap. He didn't want to start thinking like that. All the Flash could do was concentrate on where he thought the sound had come from, and he thought about the placement of the sound, but it was no good. The silence that surrounded him unnerved his thought process so much that he couldn't quite concentrate, and so instead he was left with another option: run as fast as he could to see if he could find something useful.

Back alley, main drag, a one way street, up a fire escape, and down another, around a small family that was walking back from the store with a glazed look on their face. He couldn't find what he was looking for, until he came upon it.

It was a body, a young man. He had paint smeared across his face, and there were some tools in his pockets. He was early twenties, and given the entry of the gunshot wound, he was killed instantly from the deadly accuracy to the heart. Barry searched around the area again, but he was incapable of finding a second bullet hole on the body, or anywhere around the walls, but he knew he heard another shot. He knew he did. Could his mind be playing tricks on him? Barry could think a hundred steps ahead, but he could come up with no explanation of where the other shot could have gone, unless the first show was a warning fired into the air, but given the accuracy and placement of the body, he figured that the person was run into the alley that Barry had found him in. The bullet hole proved that theory. It entered the back of his body... Why fire a warning shot if you were the one that was chasing the person?

_Drip, drip, drip._

Barry looked down by his feet. There was a small faucet with a garden hose attached to it. A small hanging garden was just above it, but the hose wasn't dripping... He walked back down to the street, and he saw that an old car was leaking fluid. It made the slightest dripping noise, but he couldn't have heard that from so far away. It sounded like it had been right next to him...

When they regrouped at Wayne Tower, Hal looked even worse that he did before. Barry explained to him with some hand gestures that he had found, what looked like, some young vigilante-imposter. Hal gave a signal that he followed along, but then Barry stopped rather suddenly. He didn't really know how to get across the part about the car, or the second bang, at least not with hand motions; however, it didn't quite matter. Barry spied someone on the rooftops, but he could barely make them out. He gave a quick point, and Hal turned around.

He saw the guy, too. He was cloaked in black, and he was hunched over a little bit. Whoever he was, his face was covered with some sort of mask, but he couldn't make out the markings on it. Hal motioned for Barry to wait there, and he shot off towards the building, but by the time he reached the top of it, the man had left. The only thing there was a single bullet casing. Hal brought it down, and he handed it to Barry, who in turned held it up. There was nothing special, or different, about it than other bullet casings that Barry had seen on one of the many crime scene he investigated, but he knew that the cap had been used to kill a man about an hour ago.

There were so many ally ways and dead ends, that it was impossible for Hal to search every single one of them, and they had no clue as to where the man who left the bullet casing had gone to, but now he was their prime suspect for this entire mess. The way that Barry had reacted to the bullet casing, and the man just watching from the building had brought the tension surrounding him close to a place that Hal didn't want to go again, and his mind was starting to cloud because of it. He tried to focus his thoughts on what he was experiencing. Whatever this was, it was incredibly well planned out, and Hal couldn't think of any reason that this wasn't set up specifically for Batman, but if that was the case, where was he? Surely if he was stalking about as he usually did, he would have seen Hal flying around.

Was something striking the fear into Bruce Wayne the way that the crushing stillness of the city was bringing a man who had experience true fear to the depths of his mind where there were no answers?

_Sliiick._

It was so faint that Hal almost didn't catch it.

_Shink._

It was another wisp of sound that Hal had heard before, a sound he knew well. It was the sound of a knife being put back into it's sheath. That ever faint sound before, the knife cutting into skin...he had heard it before in P.o.W. camps. It wasn't exactly the sound that you forgot...

_Gurgle_.

Hal landed on a roof near him, and he found a young woman with a slash wound to her neck. Some of the gravel on the rooftop had been pushed around. She had given whomever attacked her quite the fight before she was finally killed. Hal wasn't sure what to do. She was wearing a domino mask, and a rather elaborate costume, but he had no idea who she was. Perhaps just another vigilante that had taken up the fight like Bruce and his clan?

She was holding onto something, a piece of paper with an address on it. The paper was mostly unfolded. He heard a number of footsteps behind him, and he quickly constructed a sword from his energy ring as a means of defense, but he stopped his strike when he almost hit Barry. That was a laugh, like he could actually hit Barry with a simple sword swing. Barry lifted his hands to show he was unarmed, and Hal gave a smile to him, and Barry returned the favor. Hal couldn't deny that whatever this all was, it was destroying his nerves.

Barry pushed the construct-sword away from his face with his left index finger, and Hal banished it back into his imagination. The Flash then went over to the dead woman, and he looked at the piece of paper, and the slash in her throat. He looked at the footwork himself to try and see if he could discern which direction her assailant had gone, and he noticed that she was actually quite good. It appeared that she had stalked her murderer before he turned the tides on her, far better than the other vigilante he had seen. Barry pulled the paper map out of his costume again, and looked at it, found the address written on the paper, and he showed it to Hal.

He gave Hal a sign to stay there for a moment, and he rushed off, back to the original murder scene, and searched the body. Inside one of his pockets, Barry found a paper with the exact same address on it. He ran back to Hal as fast as he could, and he stopped halfway up the fire escape so that he didn't scare Hal again; when the coast was clear, he showed the slip of paper. Both vigilantes were being led somewhere, but why?

Barry suddenly felt extremely weak, and he fell to one knee. Hal rushed over to him, and put a hand on his back where he found a small dart sticking through the red of his costume. He plucked it out and showed it to Barry. Barry's eyes grew heavy, and his head tilted until his pressed against Hal's head.

Hal couldn't really explain it, but he sudden felt a little better. Perhaps it was because he had something to do other than look for a homicidal maniac who killed vigilantes. He laid Barry out on the rooftop, and made a construct-dome around them. Barry healed faster than most, so hopefully he would get over whatever it was that he had been shot with. There really wasn't much else that the two of them could do at the moment, so Hal just waited there with Barry and watched over him. A construct-mat made the rocks of the rooftop a bit more comfortable for Barry to lie.

Hal fell asleep after Barry didn't wake up for over and hour, and he was awoken by his friend giving him a gentle nudge. The sun was starting to come up. They had wasted many hours due to a simple mistake. Barry considered the fact that their darkly dressed man might be the one who shot him with a tranquillizer with enough meds to bring down several elephants. He didn't know how the guy did it, or at what point, but he assumed it was when he was crouched down trying to search for the paper in the first victim's pockets. It was a mistake he wouldn't make again. Hal ended up giving Barry a hug, a gesture that Barry returned with full force. When it was over, Hal put his hands on Barry's shoulders, and he pressed his forehead against his hooded friend's, and he finally let out a small sigh of relief. Barry gave another one of his breathy laughs, and the two of them stood up, and Hal was shocked to see that they were still alive. His construct had failed them in the middle of the night (when he lost consciousness). Why didn't their killer friend take them out when they were both asleep? All of Hal's reassurance had completely fallen apart again as this murderer's methods just didn't seem to add up.

Barry brought out the map, and he pointed to the address again, and their location, and then he nodded, and just as he was about to dash off, Hal grabbed his wrist. Barry turned to look at him, and Hal just gave a solemn face. Barry didn't really do anything, instead he just looked at Hal, and Hal just continued to look back. It was in this moment that Barry sort of understood, no need for hand gestures, words unnecessary. He nodded, knowing that the two of them were going to search together.

And so they went off, Barry running at a slower pace than normal, and Hal flying slightly above him. Hal's mood had even seem to lighten the longer they were close by, and Barry could understand it. This entire scenario had started to bring a cold chill to his body as they came across three more murders on their way to the address. Each one killed in varying ways, but all of them followed a similar pattern. Hand to hand combat, or a gunshot wound with deadly accuracy. All of the knife wounds were also perfectly executed.

The last body was hunched over at an open door, the address on the side of the building was the one matching the address on the slip of paper they had found on every single one of the victims. What was leading all of them here?

The glass doors of the building shattered as a jet-black figure rolled out on to the concrete, and in the same instant, another black-clad figure jumped through the window.

_Craaaack!_

The standing figure sounded off as he moved towards the other. The man jumped on top of the other, and brought a combat knife down, hard, against the opponent, but the opponent's hand shot up and grab the wrist before the knife could impale him. Hal created a block of energy, and knocked the figure off of the other, and Barry sped forward when he saw the knife go flying from the force of the blow, and he caught it with a sliding stop.

_Click..._

But nothing around them made a clicking...

A bomb in the building suddenly went off, and glass and heat filled the vacant street. Hal jumped in front of the blast with a wall of green energy, protecting, who he could now see was, Batman from the onslaught of the blast. His creation was weak, though, and it shattered after it absorbed most of the force. Batman caught Hal's body as it slid backwards, and Hal quickly recovered from the blow. Batman gave the smallest of recognitions to Hal, and then threw two batarangs at the foe in front of them.

The figure pulled his guns from their holsters, and he deflected the projectiles backwards, and at Barry, who was able to move out of the way, though the shock of the deflection actually caused him to lose his balance, and he tumbled to the ground in his attempt to dodge. The black-clad man started to fire several rounds at Batman and Green Lanter, but Hal made another wall, and he concentrated on trying to reinforce his constructs. He still wasn't completely over the desolate feeling of this place, and what it was doing to his head. He could almost feel Batman giving him some sort of glance that just made him feel like an idiot.

Batman kept trying to volley projectiles out from behind the wall, as it was really the only cover in the empty streets. Even Barry was having a difficult time defending from the flurry of bullets that kept making their way at him. It wasn't that he couldn't dodge them, but it was that the guy was somehow getting them to ricochet at such perfect angles, that many of the shots that hit the wall Hal had made ended up flying back towards Barry. This guy was incredible, and that was all it took. One thought out of place, and Barry missed the stray bullet that punctured his leg. He grimaced and slid to the ground.

Hal reacted in exactly the way that Batman had hoped he wouldn't. He dropped the wall, not thinking, but what happened, Batman hadn't expected. As opposed to the wall just breaking down, it exploded outwards, and the bricks of will that made it up, started to hurl towards their foe. Everything just seemed to slow down in those few seconds.

The bricks expelled. The Flash sliding to the ground. Hal flying out to Barry. Bruce throwing a few more batarangs as he ran towards Onomatopoeia. The three shots...

_BANG!_

_ BANG!_

_ BANG!_

_ Click..._

Another bomb in an adjacent store went off, filling the street with smoke, debris, and confusion. What was once so silent, was filled with a cacophony that reverberated around the block at least twice. Pieces of ash, brick, and glass finished rolling after a few seconds. As the dust settled, there was no Onomatopoeia; there was simply quiet contempt. Words couldn't be shouted for failures or loss. Hal Jordan was laying across Barry Allen, two bullet wounds in him, Bruce Wayne, a broken arm and glass embedded in his side; he faired the best. Barry's shoulder was hit by the third shot, but Hal had taken the two that... actually, probably, wouldn't have killed him, though they wouldn't have felt good.

Barry let out one of his small laughs, the one that Hal had thought didn't sound quite like him. Hal slowly moved his head around until he was looking at Barry's face, the tip of the lightning bolt on his chest pointing right at the man's chin. Barry's lips stretched slightly, but then he grimaced from the throbbing in his shoulder. Hal tried to move, but Barry held up the hand of his undamaged arm, and stopped him, but Hal didn't stop. He inched forward with the strength that he had until his head was hovering over Barry's head. He placed his forehead against Barry's as he had before they the came to the address, before the fight had started. Barry looked Hal in the eyes, and he could see the intensity there, the Hal that he knew, even behind the domino mask, and suddenly, the throbbing shoulder didn't matter as much; the act of jumping in front of the gunfire did, the small gesture of contact, the closeness...

_Mwa._

A kiss.

A simple kiss as Barry raised his neck slightly and placed his lips against Hal's. A gesture to let him know that he was there for him, and the return of passion as Hal returned the kiss. A slip of of the tongue, the teeth, and lips. Hal pulled back for a minute, and Barry pulled back on his hood. His blue eyes showed completely, and just the tip of his blonde hair poked through. He smiled at Hal with his whole face, not knowing what else to do, but this time it felt good.

_Mwa_.

They heard. It was subtle, but they heard it. All three of them.

Hal was glad that Bruce didn't have the ability to speak because he could only wonder what was going through his head, though he wouldn't admit it, Batman couldn't help but smile at the two of them. It was about damn time. For now, he helped both of his teammates up, one at a time due to his arm, and Hal, while still quite injured, with a new found will, was able to fly the three of them out of the dead zone so that the League could pick them up.

Why Onomatopoeia went through so much trouble, Hal and Barry didn't know, but like Hal, Bruce had experienced a bit of hell in his silent prison for the past week. Silence filled with the sounds of gunshots, a deep seeded memory of why he fought, and the bodies of those that wished to emulate him had amounted to him nearly dying from a seed of anguish deep within him. He wouldn't admit that the brash pilot, who he might add had constantly been kicked out of his own corp. multiple times, and the speedster who always seemed to have the last word were the ones that snapped him out of his fog, but it was true. He would owe them for it.

There was one last lingering question though. Where the hell did Onomatopoeia go, and how did he manage to silence an entire town?

Questions for tomorrow. Barry' mind only cared about a first kiss and brown eyes.


End file.
